Midsummer's Day on the Mountain

The first day of summer is not just a mark on the calendar for my pal Sue.  It's more like a religious holiday for her, and she always takes vacation on Midsummer's Day.  And lucky for me, she's wanted to spend that holy day with me for the past number of years, and we almost always head up to the mountain overlook pictured above.  This is a view of the Hudson River taking a sharp turn on its way from Corinth to Glens falls, and the trail up to this overlook is within Moreau Lake State Park.  Happily, this year the day was spectacularly lovely, cool and dry, with a blue sky swept by rolling white clouds and a light breeze to waft any bugs away.

About halfway up the mountain, we paused to explore the open area under a powerline, always hoping to find Wood Lilies blooming here on this date.

This year, thanks to a cold wet spring, the lilies are late, and we had just given up on finding any today when, behold!  Do you see that tiny dot of bright orange in that sea of green Hay-scented Fern?

Yay!  We found one Wood Lily (Lilium philadephicum)! It was missing one petal, but hey, a five-parted Wood Lily is better than none at all!

There was certainly no dearth of Whorled Loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) under the powerlines, with masses of it, all in lovely bloom.

Abundant shrubs of Sweet Fern (Comptonia peregrina) were releasing their lovely scent on the sun-warmed air.

Despite its name, Wild Basil (Clinopodium vulgare) has no detectable herby scent, but it's certainly pretty enough without it.

On the hard-packed dirt beneath the powerlines, the tiny little bubble-gum-pink lollipops of Pink Earth Lichen (Dibaeis baeomyces) sprout from a gray-green thallus.

How wonderfully appropriate!  We found the bright-yellow blooms of Common St. Johnswort (Hypericum perforatum), an introduced but widely naturalized medicinal plant that is the very symbol of Midsummer's Day, the feast day of St. John.

And we also found one of our native St. Johnsworts, the Canada St. Johnswort (Hypericum canadense).  What a marvel that we found it, it is so very tiny!  But my friend Sue has amazing eyesight, and she was the first one to spot it, hiding down in the grass.

But talk about TINY!  The wee little red flowers of Deer Tongue Grass (Dichanthelium clandestinum) take a really sharp eye to see them.

There were lots of the sunny little flowers of Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron annuus) blooming away out here in the open area under the sky. And almost all of them hosted one kind of bug or another, warming itself under the sun.

Uh oh!  Somebody else was lurking within these Oxeye Daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare):  a Goldenrod Crab Spider, just waiting for some tasty bug to stop by.

We continued up the mountain trail, which is quite steep in spots but it levels off as it nears the rocky clearing that offers a view over the Hudson River to the Adirondack Mountains beyond.

Here's where we sat to enjoy our lunch, gazing off at tier upon tier of mountains against the far horizon.

After lunch, we climbed yet higher to where huge bedrock boulders hold all kinds of fascinating plants in their rugged niches.

In places where the rock was watered by springs, we found a marvelous mix of mosses and liverworts, like this mantle of starry Haircap Moss surmounting a thick blanket of Scapania Liverwort.

In the midst of that blanket of Scapania Liverwort, we found a beautiful bright-green heart composed of Sphagnum Moss.

A puffy mound of Pincushion Moss was host to some fruiting yellow slime mold, possibly Fuligo septica, familiarly known as Dog Vomit Slime.

A pure-white slime mold called Ceratiomyxa fruticulosa was fruiting on rotting logs.  This species of slime mold has two varieties, including this C. fruticulosa var. fruticulosa, which consists of tiny white rods.

On another log, we found the domed honeycombs of  the other variety, C. fruticulosa var. porioides.  Both of these varieties were so fragile, they melted at a touch.

We found some spectacular Amanita mushrooms along the wooded trails, this one as large as a coffee saucer.  With its pale yellow stem and darker yellow cap, I'm not sure whether this is Amanita flavoconia or A. frostiana, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those.  The similar Amanita muscaria has a white stem.

On our way down the mountain, we spent some time exploring this sunny area under the giant pylons that carry electricity away from the nearby hydroelectric Spier Falls Dam on the Hudson River.

Here we found one tall stalk of yellow-flowered Moth Mullein (Verbascum blattaria), a flower we more often encounter with white blooms.  I often hear this introduced species described as invasive, but I have never seen it except as isolated individuals.  That was certainly the case at this location.

The gorgeous rose-like blooms of Purple Flowering Raspberry were thriving here at the edge of the road.  I find it odd that this flower with the scientific name of Rubus odoratus has no detectable scent.  At least, I have never detected any.

As inconspicuous as that Purple Flowering Raspberry was showy, this little Bicknell's Cranesbill (Geranium bicknellii) was flowering in the shade of other, taller roadside plants.

A look at that Bicknell's Cranesbill's seeds reveals the source of its common name.

We saw many beautiful butterflies today, but only this Yellow Swallowtail remained long enough at one flower (in this case, Red Clover) for any chance of taking a picture. Its "tails" had actually been torn away, but those tatters were hidden by the clover leaves.

We did get lots of opportunity to photograph this fascinating caterpillar, which was chowing down on some poplar leaves.  Sue and I had encountered this species (Cerura scitiscripta, the larva of the Black-etched Prominent Moth) on another occasion, but it had been in a later instar then, and we did not recognize it today.

But when it protruded those red tendrils from its rear-end and whipped them around, we guessed it might be related.  I have read that it sprays out acid from a gland on the venter of its first thoracic segment when it gets mad, but luckily, we escaped unscathed.

One might think that we'd had enough nature adventures for the day, but this was Midsummer's Day, and the day was still young.  There's a lovely little swamp by the side of Corinth Mountain Road, and this swamp lies along our routes home, so Sue and I decided to stop and see what might be happening in there among the ferns and the deep dark mud.

I coaxed Sue into stopping here with the promise of orchids, and I knew just where to look for them, having seen their dead remnants last winter.  Here was the spot, on a log protruding out into the water.  And there they were!  Just leaves and buds as yet, but soon to be Small Green Wood Orchids (Platanthera clavellata).  Their signature is two slender stem leaves, one larger, one small.  See them?

Here's a closer look.  I'll give them a couple of weeks before I come back to see them in bloom.

And wouldn't you know it, but Sue searched around and found yet another orchid!  This one had already bloomed, to judge from the withered remains at the tips of the pods.  Those pods looked enough like those of Late Coralroot that I guessed they might belong to Early Coralroot (Corallorhiza trifida), which normally blooms in May.  Another distinguishing feature was that there were no evident leaves at all, which would be true of Early Coralroot.  So I'm going to go with Early Coralroot. This is the first time I've found that species in Saratoga County.  What a nice way to cap off an already perfect Midsummer's Day!